Monday, August 29, 2022

Lend a Hand Here, Will You?

There are already so many prizes given out annually for crime, mystery, and thriller fiction that I’m not sure we need more. Nonetheless, here come the Fingerprint Awards, to be presented in association with London’s Capital Crime Festival (September 29-October 1).

As a news release explains, the Fingerprints will recognize “the best titles in the crime genre.” Most winners are to be selected by the public, though recipients in two categories are being left up to the judgment of the Capital Crime advisory board: “the Industry Award of the Year, recognizing the best marketing campaign, editorial work, or publishing strategy, and the Thalia Proctor Lifetime Achievement Award, marking an outstanding contribution to the crime-writing industry.” All of this year’s nominees were released in 2021.

The shortlisted nominees are enumerated below.

Crime Book of the Year:
The Sanatorium, by Sarah Pearse (Transworld)
1979, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
The Appeal, by Janice Hallett (Viper)
Girls Who Lie, by Eva Björg Ægisdottir (Orenda)
Slough House, by Mick Herron (John Murray Press)

Thriller Book of the Year:
A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins (Transworld)
Dead Ground, by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown)
The Night She Disappeared, by Lisa Jewell (Cornerstone)
Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
Last Thing to Burn, by Will Dean (Hodder & Stoughton)

Historical Crime Book of the Year:
A Net for Small Fishes, by Lucy Jago (Bloomsbury)
The Shape of Darkness, by Laura Purcell (Bloomsbury)
Daughters of Night, by Laura-Shepherd Robinson (Pan Macmillan)
The Shadows of Men, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage)
A Comedy of Terrors, by Lindsay Davis (Hodder & Stoughton)

Debut Book of the Year:
Girl A, by Abigail Dean (HarperCollins)
Greenwich Park, by Katherine Faulkner (Bloomsbury)
Welcome to Cooper, by Tariq Ashkanani (Thomas & Mercer)
How to Kidnap the Rich, by Rahul Raina (Little, Brown)
Edge of the Grave, by Robbie Morrison (Pan Macmillan)

Genre-Busting Book of the Year:
The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Bloomsbury)
How to Kill Your Family, by Bella Mackie (HarperCollins)
The Burning Girls, by C.J. Tudor Penguin)
Eight Detectives, by Alex Pavesi (Penguin)
What Abigail Did That Summer, by Ben Aaronovitch (Orion)

Audiobook of the Year:
People Like Her, by Ellery Lloyd (Pan Macmillan)
The Girl Who Died, by Ragnar Jónasson (Orenda)
True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox (Transworld)
A Line to Kill, by Anthony Horowitz (Cornerstone)
I Know What I Saw, by Imran Mahmood (Bloomsbury)

If you would like to vote for this year’s Fingerprint Award winners, please do so by September 19; click here for a ballot. All recipients are to be announced on September 29.

1 comment:

MI6 said...

On 22 July 2022 Mick Herron’s sardonic spy thriller series called Slough House deservedly won him the Theakston Old Peculier crime novel of the year award. If Jackson Lamb had won it he'd have had a huge hangover this morning but let's not dwell on what that might have sounded or smelt like. Both Mick Herron's Slough House series and the Burlington Files series of espionage thrillers by Bill Fairclough were initially rejected by risk averse publishers who probably didn't think espionage existed unless it was fictional and created by Ian Fleming or David Cornwell. It is therefore a genuine pleasure to see an anti-Bond anti-establishment novelist achieving immortality in Masham. Let’s hope Beyond Enkription, the first stand-alone fact based spy thriller in The Burlington Files series, follow in the Slow Horses’ hoof prints!